Sept. 7: Author of First Women’s Translation of The Odyssey to Speak

Emily Wilson, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the first known complete English translation by a woman of Homer’s The Odyssey will present “Translating The Odyssey Again: Why & How” in Bucknell Hall on Friday, Sept. 7, at 4 p.m. Her talk will be followed by a book signing.

W.W. Norton & Company published Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey last November. Her other books include The Death of Socrates (2007) and a translation of selected tragedies by Seneca (2010). The classics editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature for many years, Wilson published The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (2014), and four translations of plays by Euripides in Modern Library Classics’ The Greek Plays (2016). She is working on new translations of Oedipus Tyrannos and the Iliad, as well as a book about translation.

In his profile of Wilson in The New York Times Magazine, Wyatt Mason wrote, “When I first read these lines early this summer in The Paris Review, which published an excerpt, I was floored. I’d never read an Odyssey that sounded like this. It had such directness, the lines feeling not as if they were being fed into iambic pentameter because of some strategic decision but because the meter was a natural mode for its speaker.”

Places I've Been

The following links are virtual breadcrumbs marking the 12 most recent pages you have visited in Bucknell.edu. If you want to remember a specific page forever click the pin in the top right corner and we will be sure not to replace it. Close this message.